


Infinite Sky - Prologue One: Darkest Before Dawn

by Nalanzu



Series: World of Infinite Sky [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 23:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nalanzu/pseuds/Nalanzu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Great Ninja Alliance is falling apart and the Leaf stands alone. The second greatest military tool available to the Leaf is in the process of breaking, and a broken tool is useless, but the best chance of preserving that tool will only cause it to shatter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infinite Sky - Prologue One: Darkest Before Dawn

_A.I. (After Invasion) Year One, December 14_

“You can’t do this!” Kakashi shouted furiously.  Mud splattered his field uniform, and the sloppy bandage on his left arm showed freshly red as he clenched his fists. Only the thinnest thread remaining of his sense of self-preservation kept him from lunging right over the makeshift desk and shaking the man in front of him in frustration.

The Third Hokage just looked at him, hands steepled together. “We’re not going to defeat Tobi with any kind of frontal assault,” he said mildly. Despite his almost relaxed posture, he was more than prepared to immobilize Kakashi in at least six different ways – some even nonlethal – if the boy should lose control.

“Then let me go kill him,” Kakashi said, his entire body rigid and shaking with the attempt to maintain said control.  “I’m the one who left him to die. It’s my responsibility to finish the job.”

A slow blink was the only response he got as the Third looked at him expectantly. Kakashi glared back with his own eye, the Sharingan covered by his forehead protector.

“You know as well as I do –“ Kakashi started in the face of the Third’s silence, and the Third held up a hand. Force of habit cut off the flow of words, and Kakashi closed his mouth with a snap.

“You’re aware that the Village of Hidden Cloud was lost last year,” the Third said. Kakashi had been at the front long enough that he’d started to lose some of the subtleties of human interaction; at the age of fifteen, his grasp on them had been shaky to begin with. Given that he’d spent nine of the past ten years actively participating in some kind of war, sometimes the Third was surprised that Kakashi wasn’t non-functionally insane.  Given his increasingly unstable behavior, though, pulling him from the front in a last-ditch attempt to save the second-greatest weapon the Leaf had at its disposal was really their only option.

Their greatest weapon was, after all, a lost cause already.

“I know,” Kakashi said, jolting the Third out of his brief ruminations. He’d been part of its defense, and it was the source of the jagged scar running across his left side. It was the closest he’d come to Tobi since the war began, and the only reason he had made it out alive at all was the Third’s direct order to retreat.

“That the Village of Hidden Mist openly supports Tobi,” the Third continued.  “And that the Village of Hidden Rock is under siege.”

“We can break through to Rock,” Kakashi said, ignoring the Third’s tone and leaning forward to concentrate on what was really important. He knew the state of the Great Ninja Alliance; he knew what had been lost and he knew where the front lines were. He didn’t need to have such basic information repeated; what he needed was to implement the tactics that he knew would grant victory.

“We don’t have the lives to waste on such a fruitless endeavor. The Village of Hidden Sand surrendered this morning,” the Third interrupted wearily. “I don’t have to tell you how that changes the situation.”

“We can’t just abandon –“ Kakashi started; if Sand had surrendered, the field plans would just have to be reworked. The Leaf alone was enough to win the war; it had to be. The Leaf could succeed where the Great Ninja Alliance had failed.

“Stop!” snapped the Third.  “This is not how the war will be won.”

“So you – you want us to just roll over and let Obito do whatever he wants?” Tobi’s old name rolled off Kakashi’s tongue with the ease of past familiarity; he didn’t even realize he’d used it until he heard himself speak. It didn’t matter, though, because no matter what he did or called himself, he was still Kakashi’s responsibility. “Are we supposed to let him use the Nine Tails to raze everything to the ground on a whim? He will. He has to be stopped now, before it’s too late!”

“Do you want everyone in this village to die?” The Third didn’t move, but his chakra crackled outwards.  Kakashi wavered slightly; anyone else would have taken at least a step back, if not run from the room.

“I…” he said, and trailed off.

“I’m trying to save lives,” the Third said, voice quiet and chakra fading, and Kakashi understood suddenly that the Third’s willingness to actually convince him – to explain his reasoning – was a concession and an apology all in one.

“I know,” he said.  “But –“

“We can’t take the Nine Tails head on, or Uchiha Madara, if that’s who he really is. But surrender won’t be forever. I will not abandon this village – or any other – to Uchiha Obito’s madness. The Leaf takes care of its own.”

Kakashi couldn’t quite wrap his head around how it could possibly be a good idea to give in, even temporarily; if they pulled back it would just let Obito entrench himself more deeply in _everything_.  “But you’re not pulling everyone out,” he said carefully. “The Four- I mean, Minato is still there.”

The Third smiled again, but there was no warmth in it this time. “If anyone can stop Tobi, it’s Minato. The day he falls is the day the Leaf surrenders.”

“But you said –“ Kakashi couldn’t help but point out the inconsistencies. The Third wasn’t making sense. It didn’t matter that the Third had more years of experience with war than Kakashi had been alive; Kakashi was still perfectly capable of finding holes in whatever strategy he was presented.

The Third sighed. “Preparations for the final frontal assault are under way.”  The documents in front of him showed an analysis of just how costly an undertaking it would be; a lot of good people would die, perhaps Minato among them.  The death of the former Fourth Hokage was not too high a price to pay if he took Tobi with him, or if he made Tobi believe that this was the Leaf’s last great attempt towards victory.  The lives of those who would certainly die alongside Minato, on the other hand, would be what fed the Third’s guilt in the months and years to come. “If it fails, I need you here.” _And sane_ , he did not say, because it was increasingly clear that Kakashi was barely hanging onto what sanity he had. “For the future.”

“I understand,” Kakashi said, although he clearly didn’t. “Then what am I doing here?”

“We have a class graduating the Academy. I want you to take a genin team and train them.” For Kakashi to spend another six weeks in the field wouldn’t produce enough results to offset the possibility of his being lost – either due to his own increasing instability or to a stray weapon.

“For the war that we’re not fighting,” Kakashi said, and then shook his head. “My apologies. For the future efforts toward deposing Tobi,” he added carefully, just as clearly paying lip service to what the Third had explained.

 _And to keep you sane and grounded_ , the Third added silently.  Out loud, he said, “Good luck.”

Kakashi nodded and withdrew, mission parameters in hand. He was to report back to the Leaf with all speed; the front lines had been shifted far enough that it wouldn’t take him long at all to reach the heart of friendly territory.

The Third reached for the next set of documents. The next six weeks were critical in establishing the base for future efforts, and despite his misgivings, the Third almost regretted taking Kakashi off the front lines; the boy was experienced despite his youth and he was brilliant both on the field and off it.

“No,” he said aloud. _This is the right decision._ “A tool is of no use if it’s used until it breaks.”

 

_A.I. Year One, December 18_

Kakashi had needed less than two days to reach the village, but it took half a day to replenish his chakra. The rear guard at the gate had insisted on accompanying him to the hospital when he’d arrived, and his inability to resist properly was what convinced him that the guard was in the right. He wasn’t happy about it, though, and made a point of leaving to greet his (ridiculous mission assignment) students far later than he’d been instructed.

From inside the village, it was barely apparent that a war for survival was in the process of being waged just a short distance away.  Kakashi slipped along the rooftops in full stealth mode, resentment bubbling under his skin. He wasn’t sure if he was angry at the village residents for just _living_ while there were people dying to protect them, or at the Third for sending him home – _in disgrace_ – or at Obito for losing his grip on sanity so completely.

“I didn’t know you were still alive,” he’d said, when Cloud had fallen. Obito had been close enough to see, the right side of his body horribly scarred and his left eye missing. That eye had throbbed in Kakashi’s skull, pain spiking outwards as he spoke.  Obito hadn’t heard him, and Kakashi had been given a direct order to retreat. That had been then, though, and this was now, and Kakashi shook off the memories.  The resentment remained.

The group formally titled Team Eleven was waiting near the Academy the next morning when he finally showed up; they’d already passed the initial post-Academy test to receive a promotion from simple graduate to genin.  Kakashi was fairly sure that wasn’t how it was supposed to work – he thought he was supposed to have a say in that – but it had been a while since he’d graduated the Academy himself. Besides, he thought humorlessly, this way he couldn’t just fail them all and demand to be sent back to the front lines.

“How is the Academy even still open,” he muttered under his breath as he approached. The three of them jumped at the sound of his voice, standing up straighter.

“Name, rank and age,” he said, letting them see him coming. That much visibility made his skin crawl.

“Umino Iruka, genin, eleven,” said the tallest kid. He had dark hair pulled back into a spiky ponytail and an old scar bisecting his face. He wasn’t that tall, either; for that matter, all three boys were short. Maybe they’d grow.

“Gekkou Hayate, genin, thirteen,” said the second kid. Shorter than both of his classmates, he was pale and looked almost fragile despite the obvious familiarity with the sword hanging from one hip.

“Morinaka Touhi, genin, twelve,” said the third and final student. His light brown hair was fluffy enough to forcibly remind Kakashi of a tiny baby bunny.  Of course the last time he’d seen a rabbit, it had been in pieces, an innocent bystander and a casualty of the fight around it.  Kakashi came back to himself with a barely visible twitch; what a cheerful way to start the new lessons.

All three boys were staring at him with something approaching trepidation. “Hatake Kakashi, jounin.” He smiled, which did nothing to put them at ease. Oh, right. He was wearing a mask.  Well, he wasn’t going to take it off for a bunch of teenagers.

The Third had given him a list of potential training methods; their Academy teacher had given him an even longer list, along with brief descriptions of the students. He’d considered burning the lists – what, they were going to call him back from the front lines, where he might actually do some good, and then tell him how to do the job they’d demanded he do? – but in the end, he’d actually read them.

Most of it was, of course, useless. Wouldn’t do a thing to help them survive in the field. But he was going to start them off slow.  He pulled a bell on a string out from his pouch and hung it so that it could swing freely from his hip.

“How old are you, sensei?” said Touhi, staring at the bell with confusion. The Academy’s file had listed him as having excellent chakra control for his age, which wasn’t going to help him here.

“Fourteen,” Kakashi said, striving again for cheerful. This was ridiculous. “Wait, what’s the date?”

“December 18th,” Hayate answered, when both the other boys shrugged. Kakashi was briefly surprised, until he added up the past few months in his head. No wonder it was so cold.

“Fifteen, then.”  He was fairly sure his birthday was at some point in September.

“Oh my god, you’re Hatake Kakashi,” said Iruka, as if he’d just recognized the name. He’d been noted as having a distinct affinity for pranks and clowning around in his file, which Kakashi started to make a mental note to discourage, but Iruka wasn’t finished. “You’re the Copy Ninja,” he said with a distinct note of awe.

A renewed wave of resentment rushed through Kakashi; as if he needed to be reminded of the Sharingan and how it wasn’t being properly used. “If you say that again, I’ll kill you,” he said, vaguely aware that his voice was perfectly even.  All three of his students had paled, and he realized that he was radiating killing intent.  None of them were running, though, and he couldn’t decide if that meant they had balls or were just stupid. 

“What you just felt was a ninja’s determination to see you dead,” he said pleasantly. “The next time you feel it, assess the threat. If you can’t handle it, remove yourself from its vicinity as soon as possible.”  He paused, rather proud that he’d made a teaching moment out of the whole mess. None of the boys looked reassured; if anything, their eyes had gotten wider.  “Oh, I meant what I said, though. If I hear the words ‘copy ninja’ out of any of you, you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”

“Yes, Jounin Hatake,” the three boys said, more or less in unison.

He stared at them for a moment, but they just looked back. “Well? Go ahead and start,” he said impatiently.

“You, uh, haven’t told us what we’re doing,” said Hayate, muffling a cough.

“Oh, right.”  He tapped the bell. “You’re going to get from here to the top of the cliffs above the village. I’m going to try to stop you. The bell is so you can hear me coming. Hayate, your weapon, please. You won’t be needing it today.”

Hayate handed over the sword with an ill grace; it had been listed as his primary specialty. Kakashi didn’t like that; it made it too easy to disable him.  He’d have to train the dependence on one specific weapon out of the kid.

“That’s it? Just get to the top of the cliff?” Touhi said dubiously as Hayate stepped back in line, and Kakashi marked him as not that bright. Hayate and Iruka both looked worried.

“Are there any rules?” Iruka asked over the tail end of Touhi’s question.

Kakashi thought for a moment.  “Don’t die?” he offered. Not that he would be trying to actually kill them, but accidents did happen.

“Thanks,” Iruka grumbled, and Kakashi grinned brightly behind his mask. He liked this one.

Hayate closed his eyes briefly, which looked almost as if he were passing out. Kakashi stared at him until he opened them again with a frustrated expression. “Are there any useful rules, sensei?” he asked, and Kakashi nearly laughed. He liked this one, too.

“That _is_ a useful rule,” he said. “You have a thirty second head start.” They straightened up, and he flapped a hand. “What are you waiting for? Go, go!”  The three boys scattered and vanished.

None of them died, which he supposed was a good thing. None of them reached the cliff, either, which was really not that surprising. If they’d worked together, one of them probably could have made it. As it was, none of them was willing to sacrifice his life for a teammate, and they all went down.

When they were all lined up in front of him again, panting and sweaty, he smiled. Iruka had escaped with only minor injuries; bruises and scrapes. Hayate had a fairly deep gash along his ribs where Kakashi hadn’t been able to pull his blow with a knife in time, and Touhi’s nose was broken.  None of them were whining about it, though.

“Very good,” he said. “For a first attempt.”

“But we didn’t make it,” Touhi said, voice stuffy and nasal.

“Of course not,” Kakashi said. “Now.”  He pulled the bell off his hip and produced two more.  “It’s time for round two.”

To their credit, they still made no protest; they all stood just a little straighter, although he could see Hayate wince as the bleeding started again.  Kakashi fixed a bell to each of them.

“Same goal as before – reach the cliff. But if I hear your bell, you’re automatically disqualified.” He stepped back and tilted his head. “Focus on stealth this time, instead of speed.  Twenty-second head start.”

There were a limited number of ways they could make their way up the cliffs, and at least Hayate would be limited by his injury. Touhi probably would as well, but that would be just a little harder to predict.  Kakashi counted to 20, slowly, and started hunting.

To Kakashi’s very great surprise, Hayate made the top of the cliffs and then promptly collapsed from blood loss.  He’d laid some false trails, apparently with the help of Iruka and Touhi, who were together when Kakashi tracked them down and hung them from separate trees by their ankles. It took another several minutes of searching before Kakashi thought to check the clifftops, and he arrived in time to see – but not stop – Hayate from hauling himself over the edge.

“Made it,” he said, and fell over.  Kakashi hadn’t expected him to go the climb-the-cliff-face route (although Hayate’s clothing matched the rock almost perfectly, which was why he’d been hard to see) while bleeding as badly as he was, simply for the sake of a training exercise.

“Huh,” was all he said, though, before scooping Hayate up and bringing him to the hospital. He’d barely gotten in the door before he remembered that he’d left the other two literally hanging in the woods.  They were already in the waiting room, though, Iruka pushing Touhi towards the reception desk.  “Oh, good, you made it,” Kakashi said, noting absently that Touhi was now being waved through the doors in the back of the room.

“You,” Iruka said, reaching over Hayate to actually poke Kakashi in the chest. “Are a crazy person.”

Kakashi blinked. He’d been told, on more than one occasion, that anyone who made jounin was at least a little crazy. He’d always considered himself lucky to get there more or less sane.  It was the little genin who was the crazy one, literally poking a jounin. “You don’t say,” he said mildly, just to see what Iruka would do.

Iruka made a sort of unintelligible splutter, marched behind him, and pushed him bodily toward the reception desk.  Oh, right. Hayate. He smiled at the medic behind the desk, but she was halfway around it and guiding Hayate onto a stretcher. 

“Cut along the ribs, here,” Kakashi said, pointing. “No other major injuries.”  Hayate was whisked off to be stitched up, and Kakashi turned to leave before he remembered Iruka.  “Oh, tomorrow morning, same time, new lesson.” He made as if to walk out of the hospital, but his student blocked the way.

“Seriously?” Iruka said. “That’s it? You’re not even going to see if they’re okay?”

“They’re both fine,” Kakashi said quellingly. Spirit and determination and passion were all very well, but he was getting tired of the boy overstepping his bounds.

“You don’t-“ Iruka started.  Kakashi grabbed him and dragged him out the door and onto the roof before Iruka could get the third word out.

“I know, because if they were on the front lines, they would still be fighting,” he said, letting his voice stay cold. “Tomorrow morning, same time. Tell your teammates. Don’t be late.”

Iruka glared at him, and then leapt over the side of the building. Kakashi leaned over the side long enough to make sure that the genin was uninjured and saw Iruka vanish into the front door.

The second day went much like the first, although Kakashi stopped off at the mission desk after his daily vigil at the memorial stone only to be told that no, there were no missions for the new genin teams, what was he thinking, they were at war.  Not that the chuunin manning the mission desk spoke quite so disrespectfully, but Kakashi freely filled in the spaces between the lines of what the chuunin actually said.

He also stopped by the Hokage’s office, only to be told that by the deputy representative that no, he was not to be assigned back to the front lines. If his team had been on time, they would have been waiting for a good three hours by the time he got to the training field.

His team was, in fact, waiting when he got there, taking great pains to hide himself and his chakra.

“Definitely another stealth mission,” Hayate was saying. He was on crutches, bandages wrapped around one ankle.

“Or maybe he’s just late and wants us to think it’s a stealth mission,” said Iruka sourly. Bits of bark and leaf were tangled in his ponytail, and Touhi was similarly smudged. Hayate’s unwrapped foot was wet to the ankle; they’d apparently been searching for him.

Kakashi started to rearrange his face into a smile before stepping into the open, and then thought better of it. Yesterday’s attempts to be cheerful had been exhausting.  He appeared in front of the students, waving one hand slightly. “Yo.”

“So you’re just late,” Iruka said.

“Well, yes,” he answered. No reason to lie, after all. “You still have to be on time. No, shut up, it’s not negotiable.”  That didn’t quiet them quite as much as he’d hoped. “Oh, good thoughts on the stealth exercise, though. Part of your job is to look underneath the underneath.”  Now they just looked confused. Kakashi stifled a sigh. This was still ridiculous.

None of the boys were particularly surprised at being told that there were no missions for the day – “There’s a war on, sensei,” Touhi said with a very serious face – or upon being told that the day involved further stealth training.

“No bells?” Hayate said suspiciously when Kakashi failed to produce any.

“Mm, no.” Kakashi stared at him for a moment. “What happened to your foot?”

“Broken,” Hayate said, shaking hair out of his eyes. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks to heal.”

“Yeah, no.” Kakashi beckoned him forward. He knew a quick and dirty trick for healing bone; he’d seen it just a few months before.  He’d passed out before learning the counterpart for stitching up soft tissue, though.  It was painful, and he’d been losing blood at a rapid rate.  “Sit. Give me your foot.”

“What are you doing?” Hayate asked, even more suspiciously. Kakashi approved of the attitude.

“You’ll be good as new in just a minute.”  The technique took quite a bit of chakra, which was its other disadvantage. On the plus side, it wasn’t as if Kakashi needed to actually conserve chakra, comparatively low stamina or not.

“Yeah, okay, and why didn’t-“ Hayate started.  Kakashi froze him with a look.

“Try not to scream,” he said helpfully, took his chakra, and twisted. 

Hayate did not, in fact, scream.  He did pass out.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Kakashi said, and poked at Hayate’s shoulder. No response.  “Well, you two have until I get back to hide yourselves as best you can. If I find you before sunset, consider yourself dead.”

There was a great deal of what Kakashi was sure was unnecessary noise when he showed up with an unconscious Hayate for the second day in a row. Most of that noise came in the shape of strict instructions to _never do anything like that again, are you trying to get your genin team killed before they ever make it out onto the field, Jounin Hatake, what the hell were you thinking._

It took him far longer than he’d expected to escape and get back to his other two students. Maybe they’d use the time wisely.

At least neither Touhi nor Iruka were out in the open when he reached the meeting point, and they’d each had the sense to lay at least one false trail.  Less encouraging was the fact that it took him just under an hour to find Touhi, and it wouldn’t have taken him that long except that he had heard the puppy and immediately discounted whoever was up that particular tree as both not a threat and not one of his students. Surely no one who’d graduated the Academy would be so lacking in basic survival instinct.

“ _Why_ ,” he said, almost despairingly when he realized that the false trail was actually a false trail and the real trail was the one that led to the tree. He was sure the kid hadn’t had a puppy when the lesson had started. He would have noticed.

“He was lonely,” Touhi said, cuddling the puppy. Its wide brown eyes matched his, dark and liquid, wide with entreaty.

“Where did you even find a puppy?” Kakashi asked, knowing – _knowing!_ – that he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“He was in a box and it was abandoned and he was all alone and –“ Touhi started, and Kakashi put a hand over his student’s mouth.  It took him another thirty seconds to be sure he could speak without screaming in frustration.  Kakashi had been in the field too long to risk unnecessary noise.

“Go do something with him and then come back and try again. Without the dog.” All in all he was fairly proud of how even his tone was.

“But –“ Touhi started from behind Kakashi’s gloved hand, and Kakashi briefly considered just breaking the dog’s neck. Apparently he had been too calm.

“Touhi,” he said instead, letting any hint of warmth fade out of his voice, and Touhi nodded.

_A.I. Year Two, January 23_  

The war was going badly for the Leaf.  Kakashi hadn’t been authorized to receive news from the front lines in the four weeks since he’d been yanked off of them, but that didn’t mean he was lacking in information. He was brilliant and motivated and very highly trained, and none of it was helping him get back to where he knew he could do the most good.

“Why?” he asked, every time his application to transfer back to the war zone as rejected. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming.  The more Kakashi thought about the Third’s plan – to _let_ Obito win now in hopes of defeating him later? What kind of madness was that? – the more he was certain it was doomed to failure. He was sure he could handle Obito on his own; a simple assassination, as a one-man cell, was well within his capabilities, even if that man was the monster that Obito had become and even if the rumor that Uchiha Madara was still alive and protecting Obito was true.  That it would be a suicide mission didn’t really bother Kakashi; as long as Obito died with him, he would be happy enough.

“Keep working with your students, Jounin Hatake” was the most he ever got as a response.  Kakashi sulked, but he wasn’t about to shirk his duty to the Leaf. Not even when it was an absurd use of the resource that he was. Occasionally Kakashi found himself thinking that his genin – and he’d started to think of them as _his_ genin, when had that happened? – weren’t bad. They were steadily improving; they were all quieter and faster, they had more stamina than when they’d started, and they’d started to learn hand seals. If the war lasted long enough, they might be an asset after all.

The prankster side described in Iruka’s file hadn’t manifested; instead he’d apparently applied his considerable energy to learning as much as he could as quickly as possible. Hayate had maintained most of his focus on his sword, but he was good enough with it that Kakashi was actually impressed.  He still didn’t like the myopia of having a particular specialty, but at least he felt confident in Hayate’s ability to get the sword back should he be separated from it.

Even Touhi’s damn dog had gotten better behaved, although Kakashi couldn’t for the life of him remember how he’d ended up babysitting the furry menace during stealth practice. 

The puppy had, surprisingly, helped Touhi during speed practice simply because the boy refused to leave it alone, so he’d just picked it up and carried it; its extra weight had given him a bit of an edge, and Touhi had improved more than either of his classmates.  Or at least he had when he put the dog down; at the moment it was curled at his feet as he energetically practiced hand seals in the late morning chill.

“Okay, stop.  All of you stop.” The sun was well above the horizon, warming the air barely enough to start melting some of the accumulated snow. It was still cold enough that he could see his breath – and everyone else’s – spreading through the air in intermittent clouds of white.  Edges of frost had rimed the windows for the first time in weeks when he’d woken that morning, but Kakashi hadn’t spared much of a thought for it, except to note that it was warmer than it had been for several days now.

The dog bounded up to him, slush spraying from all four paws and tail wagging. Kakashi ignored it, which it apparently took as tacit instruction to sit at his feet, tail wagging even harder. “Oh, shut up,” he said to it, and it barked. “The rest of you, hands at your sides. Today we start practicing chakra control.”

There was an exercise he vaguely remembered learning at the age of six, involving walking on water. Hayate had demonstrated a little practice, way back in the beginning when he’d climbed the cliff face, but Kakashi hadn’t trusted that the other two wouldn’t do something stupid and get themselves killed.

Something else occurred to him. “Oh, before we start. You all know how to swim, right?”

All three boys nodded, and the dog barked. Kakashi closed his one visible eye and counted to three. “I wasn’t talking to _you_ ,” he said to the dog. It barked again, and his temper snapped. “Touhi, get rid of the damn dog.”

“Yes, Jounin Kakashi,” Touhi muttered, lowering his head with just the barest hint of hesitation.  He didn’t go far with the dog, and the knot he used to tie it wouldn’t hold it for more than a few hours (really, the dog was far too adept at escaping a leash for Kakashi’s peace of mind), but it was close enough.

“This way,” he said, when Touhi returned.  There was a pond on one of the training grounds that he’d reserved specifically for the day’s training; it was deep and cold, but the surface was as smooth and still as glass. The depth and temperature lent it a sort of solidity that made it good practice for water-walking, which in turn would teach the boys chakra control as quickly as possible.  He’d even stopped by before meeting his students to ensure that the surface wasn’t frozen (it had been, of course, but it wasn’t too difficult to generate enough heat to melt it, and the warmth of the sun should keep it from freezing until at least after dark).

The students followed him into the training ground, looking around curiously; he hadn’t brought them to one before.  Some of the equipment they were eyeing had a clearly defined purpose that even a pre-genin could figure out, but some of it must have looked positively arcane. Kakashi smiled under his mask as at least one set of eyes bugged out every few yards.

“Keep walking,” he said, when Hayate slowed down.  “We’re headed all the way to the back.”

It wasn’t, in fact, quite cold enough to refreeze the pond, he noted with satisfaction as they arrived, although the edges of the snowdrifts that had escaped the sun (which, to be fair, was pretty much all of them) boasted thin skins of ice where they touched the water.  Without pausing, Kakashi walked to the center of the pond. His genin, on the other hand, stopped at the edge when their toes got wet.

“Dry your feet off before you get frostbite,” he said, and then noticed that all three of them were actually wearing boots. He looked down at his own toes, bare in his sandals.  “Right. Well. You’re going to learn how to walk on water.”

“How did you do that?” Touhi asked, leaning forward.

“You have to gather your chakra – you do know what chakra is, right? How to gather it in part of your body?” He hadn’t really tested them on chakra control before, although theoretically every Academy graduate had had basic training.

“Yeah, we’ve all had the training,” Iruka said, echoed by Hayate’s “We learned how to gather it in our hands.”  Touhi just nodded enthusiastically.

“Okay. Instead of your hands, you have to gather it in your feet. You need to bring out the proper amount of chakra and concentrate it evenly along the soles of your feet.” He paused. “It might be harder with boots on.”

Touhi immediately started taking his boots off.

“Stop that,” Kakashi said. “Keep your boots on. You’ll learn better control.” He paused again, forgetting exactly where in the explanation he’d left off. Touhi tied his boots firmly and straightened up, and Kakashi remembered. “Right, chakra in the soles of your feet. Then you need to adjust it to your weight as you walk, forcing it down and out to hold you above the water.”  He took a few slow steps.  “Like so.”

“None of us can actually see the chakra, Jounin Kakashi,” Iruka said, but mostly without the bitter resentment he might have shown a month earlier.

“No, but you can see my feet move as my weight distribution changes. You’ll need to adjust your chakra accordingly,” Kakashi told him.  “Come on, give it a shot.”

It didn’t take long for the three of them to fall in and get completely soaked, which was why Kakashi kept the initial training at the shallower end of the pond. It was easier for them to swim back to shore and haul themselves onto dry land.

“Use your chakra to regulate your body temperature,” he said to Touhi after the first time the kid got wet.  He’d managed half a step, which was honestly a decent first try. “You know how to do that, right?”

“That’s the first thing we learn,” Touhi said. That wasn’t how Kakashi remembered early chakra lessons, but since Touhi wasn’t actually shivering and his hands were warm to the touch, Kakashi let it go.

Iruka, however, didn’t. “Oh, that was the final exam and you know it,” he said.

“Shut up,” Touhi muttered, and stuck out his tongue. He looked ridiculous, fluffy hair mostly plastered to his head except where a few inexplicable tufts were standing straight up and glistening in the sun.

Iruka started making what was no doubt some sort of obscene gesture, but his control slipped and he fell into the freezing water with a splash. Touhi started laughing and lost control as well, which sent choppy little waves toward Hayate’s feet.  Hayate kept his balance for a full second before toppling over and sinking. Kakashi couldn’t help it; he laughed.

Three heads whipped around and stared at him, bobbing up and down as the boys tread water.

“What?” Kakashi said, glancing around to check whether there was something behind him. No, they seemed to be staring at him.

“Oh my god,” Iruka said, grinning.

“I know, right?” Touhi said, also grinning.

Hayate just smiled, and then they all dove for his feet.

“What are you _doing_?” Kakashi backpedaled, not having expected an attack en masse, perpetrated by grinning lunatics who had apparently possessed his students, and they stopped with disappointment practically radiating off of them. He had weapons in hand just in case they _had_ actually been possessed, but they stopped before they reached him.

“We’ve never seen you look happy before,” Touhi explained.

“Uh,” Kakashi said, not having an answer to that. “I. Um.”

“We like you too,” Hayate said, and led his teammates in returning to shore.  Kakashi blinked, but no, it seemed that that had actually happened.

“Maybe you should all spread out a little,” he said, which put Hayate at the shallow end of the pond, Iruka in the middle, and Touhi farther out at the other end. 

Several splashes later, the sun slipped behind a bank of clouds, dropping the temperature to just below freezing.  Kakashi eyed the ever so slight skin of ice starting to form in the quiet edge of the pond and decided that it was nearly time to go in. None of them were really getting the hang of actual walking yet, despite vast amounts of what should have been helpful commentary, but there was enough light left for one last-ditch effort.

“Individual tutoring time!” he announced. “Whoever I’m not working with, practice standing still. Hayate, take a step.”

Hayate turned out to be focusing his chakra too precisely, in exactly the wrong way. He kept making a needle-thin shaft aimed downward.  Since it wasn’t anchored in anything, it wouldn’t bear his weight, and he didn’t have the balance to stay on top of it on the rare occasions he managed to reach the bottom of the pond.  “Spread it out more,” Kakashi said, and Hayate took a total of four steps before slipping sideways and managing to inhale just as he went under.  Kakashi hauled him out by his shirt, and dumped him on the shore. “Stay there.”

Coughing, Hayate set about squeezing water out of his clothes.  Kakashi moved on to Iruka.

The problem with Iruka was that he didn’t have the control necessary to produce exactly the right amount of chakra at the right time, which was what the exercise was supposed to produce. He was distinctly better than he had been at the start of the afternoon, though, so Kakashi had him demonstrate before nodding once. “Next time, keep doing that.” He glanced over his shoulder, feeling like something was missing. “But go make sure Hayate doesn’t freeze first.”  Iruka nodded and jogged around the pond toward his teammate.

Kakashi turned to Touhi, who wasn’t there. “Touhi!”

The water was still rippling outward at the far end of the pond; Touhi couldn’t have gone far. Kakashi looked around the surrounding trees, but the kid was nowhere to be seen. Kakashi had heard him fall into the water just moments before, and he knew Touhi wasn’t fast enough to get out of sight in those few seconds.  He couldn’t possibly have run off (to find the dog, perhaps? Kakashi would be hard-pressed to not strangle him if he had actually gone after his pet).

With a sinking feeling, Kakashi realized what exactly was missing. He hadn’t heard Touhi climb back out of the water.  Cursing his own lack of attention, Kakashi shoved his forehead protector up and looked below the surface of the water. The barest trace of human chakra was visible, six feet down and sinking slowly.  Kakashi dove toward it, reaching Touhi just in time to see the chakra gutter out. 

“No, no, no,” he said, the words escaping in a hail of bubbles.  They obscured his vision, and he panicked for half a second before his reaching hand closed around Touhi’s wrist.  He hauled the boy upwards, breaking the surface and reaching the shore with Touhi clutched to his chest.  A white fleck drifted through his vision, followed rapidly by another, and another.  Kakashi rubbed at both eyes before realizing that it was snow. 

It wasn’t melting on Touhi’s skin.

Kakashi knew what to do for drowning; drain the water. He turned Touhi over and applied the appropriate pressure, but nothing happened. Had Touhi not been breathing when he’d fallen? How could that possibly have happened?  Numbly, Kakashi kept going, turning Touhi over and started compressions on his chest. Thirty, then two breaths, then thirty again, chakra pooling in his hands with each repetition.  He heard a voice shouting in the distance, and realized dimly that it was his.

Touhi wasn’t responding.  Kakashi poured more chakra into him, trying to support the pathways that should have been there, that he couldn’t find.  “This is wrong, all wrong,” he said.  The hospital; the medics would know what to do.  He gathered Touhi up and ran.  The trip itself was a blur, his arrival at the Leaf hospital barely clearer. 

“Take him!” he shouted at the closest staff member he could find, and the medic blanched. Kakashi could see the other man’s chakra shiver, and he hastily closed the Sharingan eye.  “Take him,” he said again, and Touhi was gone in a flurry of activity.

There was no question of leaving; every other time he’d brought a student to the Leaf hospital’s emergency center, he’d known exactly how severe the injury in question was and how much shouting he was avoiding by escaping out the nearest window. This time he had no idea. He didn’t know. He’d seen drowned soldiers on the front lines, but they hadn’t felt like Touhi.

“Jounin Kakashi,” said a familiar voice, and Kakashi nearly jumped out of his skin. He was sitting on one of the benches in the waiting room, knees tucked up under his chin and arms wrapped around his legs.  His clothes were dry, although he was sure they’d been soaking wet just a few minutes ago. He blinked at the sudden change in light – when had it gotten so dark out? – and looked up to see Iruka standing in front of him, completely expressionless. No, not expressionless; there was something there, but Kakashi didn’t know what it was.

“Where’s Hayate?” Kakashi asked, suddenly desperately afraid that he’d lost Hayate underwater as well.

“He’s fine!” Iruka said quickly, holding up both hands defensively. “Well, he caught a cold, apparently, but that’s – look, they want to talk to you.”

Kakashi looked past Iruka, noticing for the first time that a small knot of ninjas – mostly members of the military police force –loosely grouped around him. He meant to ask what they wanted, but instead he said, “Touhi.”

“I’m sorry, Jounin Hatake,” said the officer closest to him. “We’ll need you to come with us.”

“No, I can’t go anywhere.” Kakashi was on his feet and balancing the back of the bench before he finished the sentence. He’d been watching the door, and while several people had gone in and out, Touhi had yet to emerge. “Not without Touhi. Where’s my student?”

“We require your assistance in investigating the matter of Morinaka Touhi’s death,” said the officer, but that was wrong. That was all wrong. Kakashi was responsible for Touhi. They were nowhere near the front lines. There were no Mist ninjas, no Obito, and no Tailed Beasts. Most importantly, Kakashi was responsible for Touhi, and he’d promised that anyone under his care would come home alive, so Touhi couldn’t possibly be dead.

“I assure you that he is,” said the officer, and Kakashi realized that he’d been speaking out loud.

“Jounin Kakashi,” Iruka said again, with the same unreadable expression, and another officer pulled him out of reach.

“Jounin Hatake, I must insist that you come with us. Immediately.”  There was no way they could take him if he fought, but the conflict could and probably would spread to innocent bystanders. Including Iruka, and Hayate if Iruka had brought him here. He couldn’t endanger any more of his genin, not when he’d failed already. Kakashi bowed his head and acquiesced.

_A.I. Year Two, January 24_

The verdict, rendered a bare twenty-four hours later, was carelessness; he had caused his student’s death through carelessness, inattention, neglect. Touhi wasn’t experienced enough to recognize the impending signs of chakra exhaustion, and the lack of energy plus the final shock of near-freezing water had stopped his heart. That he hadn’t been able to breathe while sinking to the bottom of the pond had sealed his fate.

For his part, Kakashi had simply nodded and agreed with whatever they told him. It had been his fault. It had been entirely his fault. He should have been paying closer attention, shouldn’t have thrown them so quickly into water-walking, should have taught them the signs of chakra exhaustion and what it meant.

Touhi had been underwater for six minutes by the time Kakashi had pulled him out.

 

_A.I. Year Two, January 25_

Two days after Kakashi brought Touhi to the Leaf hospital for the last time, Iruka snuck up to his window and told him that nobody knew if Hayate was going to make it through the night in a voice shaking with anger.

“He caught a cold,” Kakashi said without thinking, repeating what Iruka had told him.

“He has pneumonia,” Iruka hissed. “In both lungs. His chakra was so low when I brought him in that it depressed his immune system.”

“That’s not supposed to happen,” Kakashi said, but he wasn’t sure if he said it out loud or not, because Iruka just kept talking. Kakashi let the words wash over him, because there was nothing he could say that would make anything right.

_A.I. Year Two, February 11_

“I don’t know what to do with you,” the Third said to him, nineteen days after Iruka’s clandestine visit, eighteen days after the funeral, the day that the inevitable conclusion must be reached that Kakashi had caused the death of a fellow Leaf ninja and deserved to die for it, and two days before the Leaf’s final frontal assault would let Minato – the greatest weapon the Leaf would ever have – either defeat Tobi or die trying. 

Kakashi struggled to gather his thoughts, standing in front of the Third – hastily returned from the field command post – and staring dully at the ground. He’d failed on the front lines, because he’d been brought back to the village. He’d failed as a teacher, because one of his students was dead and another was still too sick to move and it was his fault. “Send me back to the front,” he said, when the Third remained silent.

“So you can commit suicide by proxy?” the Third snapped. “Absolutely not.”  He tapped a brush handle against his desk, shaking dried flecks of ink loose.

“But I –“ Kakashi started. 

“You’re staying here.” Tap, tap. “Imprisonment for a matter of months satisfies both the letter of the law and keeps you out of trouble.”

Atonement, then, was to be his punishment.

 

_A.I. Year Two, February 13_

Even locked in a cell, Kakashi knew that the war had been lost. The Third’s strategy had failed. Minato had failed – he’d survived, but so had Obito, and now everything was lost. Kakashi wondered dully if Obito would simply have him killed, or if maybe Obito would do it himself.

_A.I. Year Two, February 16_

Nothing had changed. Kakashi thought perhaps that he’d lost touch with reality entirely and that the war hadn’t ended; how else to explain the fact that the same faces went by outside his cell, how else to explain the fact that he was still in the same cell, how else to explain that he could still see the Third’s chakra in the Hokage’s office from the bare slit in the wall that served as a window?

 

_A.I. Year Two, February 17_

Within the first week of confinement – with someone watching, always watching, and where had the Third found someone with nothing better to do than watch a failed jounin just sit in a cell? – Kakashi knew that no matter the status of the war, the Third was wrong.  Confinement served no purpose.  He had failed Obito, he had failed the Leaf, and he had failed his students; the problem clearly lay with his inability to properly see and assess any given situation.  The solution, then, was to change his vision.

Once Kakashi had fixed how he saw the world, he would be able to take up his responsibilities again. Not with his students – never again would he allow himself to be responsible for the wellbeing of ninjas who hadn’t yet been fully formed – but in setting right the wrong that he’d allowed in the first place.

 

_A.I. Year Two, May 4_

It took the better part of three months for Kakashi to convince the watchers – although not the Third, never the Third – that he was sincere in giving the correct responses. The hardest part was not reacting to the apparent fact that the war had just vanished, as if it had never been; the only evidence Kakashi could see that any conflict at all had taken place was the missing people. Pretending rehabilitation in the face of such madness took a new type of patience, one Kakashi was almost surprised to find that he possessed.

The appropriate amount of lying finally gave Kakashi the time unobserved and, more importantly, the loosened restraints to sharpen his chakra around his right hand in order to pull his right eye from its socket.  He’d nearly reached the optic nerve, focusing past the screaming pain, when his watchers flooded into the cell and put a stop to the attempt.

Kakashi woke to a white ceiling and a prickly feeling along the underside of his skin. It didn’t take long before the disapproving eyes of the medic in charge of his case were boring into his skull. “I don’t have time for your histrionics,” the medic said. “Look at the inside of your forearms.”

The prickling sensation increased as Kakashi lifted his arms to stare at them. Black ink stared back, sunken into his skin. The work was exquisite, and there was only one person in the village who could have pulled off such a delicate technique.  That person was standing behind the medic.

“You may go,” the Third said sharply. The medic bowed jerkily and withdrew, footsteps fading down the hallway. The Third turned toward Kakashi, face unreadable.

“Since you’re apparently not responding to anything else, I’ve placed a seal on you. It will prevent you from causing harm to yourself. That’s all it does.” The attempt to salvage the Leaf’s second greatest military asset had failed. With regret, the Third said the words that had once been unofficially recognized as a tacit dismissal from any military duties. “Go figure out some way to be useful, Sharingan Kakashi.”  The boy in front of him stiffened as the words sank in, and then gradually relaxed.

The Third exited the room, already mentally readjusting future tactics to account for the loss of the Copy Ninja.  _You’ve set us back years,_ he didn’t say. It wouldn’t do any good.

Kakashi smiled and pulled himself to his feet. His mask went over his face, and his forehead protector covered the Sharingan eye. He pulled his sleeves down to cover the marks on his forearms and tried to rub the tingling sensation off his skin. If he couldn’t change his vision, he thought he could remove its source.

Squinting up at the bright blue sky, Kakashi ambled out of the cell and into the sunlight. The war had been lost, the Leaf had been occupied, and the madman now calling himself Tobi was at the root of it all. He hadn’t lost his purpose after all, hadn’t failed in every respect. There was one thing that he could still do.

Hatake Kakashi set about preparing to assassinate Uchiha Obito for the first time.

 

\+ _to be continued in Infinite Sky_ +


End file.
